This paper considers attempts to import pedagogic practices from other educational systems. In so doing, it focuses upon policymakers' attempts to: (a) import interactive whole class teaching approaches to the UK (and, to a lesser extent, the US); and (b) export learner-centred pedagogies, largely derived from Anglo-American theorising and…

This paper examines the outstanding performance of Shanghai, China on PISA 2009 and its effects on other national systems and within the global education policy field. The OECD's PISA is helping to create this field by constituting the globe as a commensurate space of school system performance. The effects of Shanghai's success are…

Numerous countries are introducing National Qualifications Frameworks (NQFs), or preparing to introduce them, despite the limited empirical evidence for their effectiveness. This paper takes advantage of recent additions to the evidence base on NQFs in order to assess their impacts, focusing on comprehensive frameworks. It also presents analytical…

Using data from the super-sample of the "PISA Suisse" 2003 assessment, this article examines the relationship between the characteristics of education systems (made up of homogeneous or heterogeneous tracks) and their consequences in terms of effectiveness and equity. Our results indicate that it is not so much the official structure of tracks as…

Comparative international tests of students' achievements have become increasingly popular over the past decade. An outcome of this widespread practice is the tendency of various countries to evaluate their national status according to their pupils' international ranking in such achievement tests, partly due to the common belief that high ranking…

In this article, the author explores the market phenomenon revealed in the practice of a mixed-ability grouping policy in Taiwan, and traces the influence of the wider educational contexts on the formation of the market phenomenon. Although there have been no major policies introduced with the intention of creating a market mechanism in Taiwanese…

This paper examines the politics of policy-borrowing in Korean education. I use the term "loanwords" as a metaphor for the practice in some Korean educational sectors of using borrowed English-origin educational rhetoric to create actual policy reform. I argue that discourses of choice and diversity, as loanwords, are initially bifurcated into…

Previous studies on the role of the school in influencing attainment in South African schools have concluded that the inequalities which are known to exist in these are still largely due to the legacy of the Apartheid system. More recently, policy focus has been on narrowing the gap between the attainment of different socio-economic groups by…

Most existing research indicates that working students perform more poorly than do full-time students on standardized achievement tests. However, we know there are wide international variations in this gap. This article shows that national and international contexts help to explain the gap in the academic performance between working and nonworking…

This article studies the educational strategies adopted by university students from different class backgrounds in a Scandinavian welfare regime. Studies show distinct differences among classes relating to economic considerations, risk-averse behavior, and patterns of socialization among university students. We investigate these differences…

In international achievement studies, questionnaires typically ask about the presence of particular household assets in students' homes. Responses to the assets questions are used to compute a total score, which is intended to represent household wealth in models of test performance. This study uses item analysis and confirmatory factor…

China's rural-urban migration presents a significant educational challenge. This study uses theories of segmented assimilation and school segregation to measure the assimilation and well-being of migrant children who attend either Beijing's public schools or its informal migrant schools. Controlling for other factors, we find poorer achievement…

This article shows how patronage politics affects a popular international education model: community-managed schools (CMS). Focusing on Honduras's CMS initiative, PROHECO (Programa Hondureno de Educacion Comunitaria), I demonstrate how patronage can undermine CMS accountability. Whereas supporters argue that CMS increases accountability, partisan…

We examine the impact of school violence on immigrant populations internationally. To do so we apply three-level models to 2007 TIMSS data to investigate the extent to which immigrant students are affected by school violence, and whether school- and educational-system levels of immigration and violence are related to achievement. We find that,…

Koreans have been successful in nesting their educational achievement into places like China and the United States, where they have earned the title of "model minority". This research is a comparison of the manner in which the model minority stereotype is handled by Korean Chinese and Korean Americans. The gathered data leads us to argue that…